Yalo

Yalo was a soldier on one of the many sides in Lebanon's sectarian civil war, before becoming a deserter and a thief, a nightwatchman in Paris, an arms smuggler, and then a rapist. And then he falls in love with his victim - who turns him in to the police.

This novel is a modern Thousand and One Nights, a series of confessions extracted under torture, a recitation of all of his memories, all his sorrows, all his guilt - and of the other crimes his interrogators have him confess to. Beirut and the legacy of the wars of the Middle East are the texture of Elias Khoury's extraordinary literary achievement.

“Los Angeles has Joan Didion and Raymond Chandler, and Istanbul, Orhan Pamuk. The beautiful, resilient city of Beirut belongs to Khoury' Laila Lalami, Los Angeles Times.”

'A compelling, relentlessly immediate tale' Daniel Hahn, Independent on Sunday. Independent on Sunday
'A highly compelling performance, presented in beautifully crafted, often lilting prose... This novel is about a corrupted individual in a corrupting time, but it speaks of and to us all' Guy Mannes-Abbott, Independent. Independent
'A curiously mesmerizing novel … an ambitious piece of work … It would be hard to think of a more worthwhile endeavour for fiction to embark on' James Lasdun, Guardian. Guardian
' Los Angeles Times
'A dizzying journey into the extremes of human experience - into intense sensuality and stomach-turning violence' Adam Lebor, New York Times. New York Times

Elias Khoury is the author of thirteen novels, four volumes of literary criticism and three plays. He was editor-in-chief of the cultural supplement of Beirut's daily newspaper, An-Nahar, and is Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.

Yalo is the story of the interrogation and torture of Daniel Habeel Abyad, a young man accused, among other crimes, of raping women and robbing their lovers in a forest on the edge of Beirut. From the outset, however, it is Daniel's alter ego, Yalo, who asserts himself as the story's true protagonist. Brought up in a claustrophobic household, and a militia member during the Lebanese civil war, Yalo sees the world differently from others. Faced by the interrogator's implacable demands for confessions, he writes and rewrites the story of his life, achieving in the process a transition from hapless victim to driven inquisitor of his own history. Through the refracting lens of Yalo's imagination, Khoury grapples with the idea of truth and memory, and opens to the reader a world which is violent, painful and shocking, and yet sensual and beautiful. Yalo is a mesmerizing insight into the human soul.

Yalo was a soldier on one of the many sides in Lebanon's sectarian civil war, before becoming a deserter and a thief, a nightwatchman in Paris, an arms smuggler, and then a rapist. And then he falls in love with his victim - who turns him in to the police. This novel is a modern Thousand and One Nights, a series of confessions extracted under torture, a recitation of all of his memories, all his sorrows, all his guilt - and of the other crimes his interrogators have him confess to. Beirut and the legacy of the wars of the Middle East are the texture of Elias Khoury's extraordinary literary achievement.

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